Broken
by Sheila51
Summary: A young Jedi apprentice is lost to the darkside during the fall of the Old Republic. EP3 based fic.


**Broken:

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A/N:** This came out of my thoughts abouth what the feelings of someone with everything might be when they suddenly have nothing. And it kind of developed from there! Please give me plenty of feedback!

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I am broken. I am lost. I have forgotten everything and nothing. I have nothing, nothing of my own, nothing to go on for. Except you. Your frightened eyes look up at me. I try to smile, to reassure, but my once swift smile has deserted me. My 'over excitable temperament' is not in evidence. It was broken with my spirit. Your still looking at me. I hold out my arms, almost jumping you hurry to be hugged by me. I brush my fingers through your soft blonde hair. You still smell like the temple, a mixture of the temple soap, sweat and rough cloth, combined with a tang of something I could never identify. Your hair is soft, as is your skin. My thoughts are drifting I know. My master would have spoken harshly at me for my lack of concentration. I whisper things in your ear, things I know aren't true, it isn't alright, were not going to be fine… There isn't anyone who might come and find us. I'm sorry for my deception. I'm sorry if it hurts you. I'm sorry for everything.

I'm sorry I wasn't stronger, I'm sorry I didn't do better, I'm sorry things turned out this way… A shudder warns me. I sigh. You start as the ship makes a strange noise. A tractor beam I realize. I whisper an apology into your hair. I am broken, I cannot protect you. I couldn't even help my master; I am guilty, guilty, guilty. Guilty of murder, guilty of pride, guilty of arrogance. Guilty. My eyes burn and an invisible vice has wrapped around my heart. Tears prick at my eyes as my face heats.

I want scream, I want to cry out, I want to yell at the universe for this unfairness… I want the force to be able to turn the tides of time… I want to cry. The tears are begging from release. But still I hold to my pride, my stubborn pride. I will not cry, I will not break. Not on the outside. The truth screams inside me. I cannot avoid the pain, the shame.

I am broken. You're sobbing now, too young too understand anything about the emotions that rage inside me, too young to interpret them. So you sob. I want to join you, I want cry out. I want to give in.

Instead I repress my tears and hold still and silent. I can feel the pain inside you little one. And again I know there is nothing I can do. Somewhere above me I can sense the stormtroopers. A darkness in me rises up. Like a dark specter all my anger and my fear consumes my thoughts. My feelings are all tangled. Shame. Regret. Pain. Sorrow. Hate. Fear… Other feelings tangle as well. I pause and think over the feelings. Images of things I have never seen race through my mind. My feelings are with yours. I stiffen, you pull away, and suddenly I am alone again. The darkness grows still further at my sudden sense of being totally alone. You crawl away from me, your sobs now loud and harsh inside the small container I hid us within.

My eyes are now stinging again as my feelings rise like bile inside me. Such feelings I have never known. Such pain, such hurt. I remember other things I had tried not to think of because of the pain they brought me. I remember looking down at the bodies in the ruins of the temple, I remember the blood, the echoed memory of dark side power in the air, a tang of hate and pain. Tang. Now I know the scent you carry, it is the taste of remembered happiness, a bitter smell when one is no longer happy, it is a sense of happiness, a sense of completion I no longer have.

Before that day, before the war I knew the path before me, I had mentors and teachers and friends to guide me on the well worn path to becoming a Jedi. I had those who could warn me of the dangers, I had those who would steady me if I should stumble, in my arrogance I had never considered I could actually fall from the path, in our arrogance we had thought none could fall. The bitter hopes and dreams of those days are like ash in my mouth. My pride of my Lightsaber, my expectations on the day I was chosen by my master, may he be with the force… And the hope I had of becoming a Jedi Knight.

All broken. All shattered. Like ashes on the wind. Like a soul ripped from a body too young for death, all the innocence of youth was burned away in flame and death. But where the 'swords' of old would come through fire tempered and stronger I had been to weak. Where some boys had become men I had failed.

I failed. I failed them all.

The stormtroopers drew closer.

I had failed in my last duty. To save you. The tears are hot on my flushed cheeks, my pain is raw. Like a saber burn it cuts through me, cuts to my very soul. And still you sob. Silently my recriminations are shouted to the galaxy. And wrenched from my lips, with such a force of pain and rage it astounds me.

I am broken and alone. I have failed every test. I deserve to die. You don't deserve to pay for my failure. My eyes blink open and I Reach out to you. You are pulling away. But there is nowhere for you to go. I rock you in my arms, your trembling.

"I'm sorry…" and you are gone, a candle snuffed in the strong breeze that is my will. A twig broken beneath my foot. A flower wilted in the sunshine. Screaming I send you into the void of death.

I have broken, I have given up, given in. I am nothing.

And so I am gone. Broken, crumpled. Gone.


End file.
